COVID-19 & Healthcare

NNU: Where There is Struggle, Nurses Will be There (video)

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Power339-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

National Nurses United (NNU) is one of the most creative and most activist unions in the US.

Long before anyone was talking about the financial transaction tax (AKA the Robin Hood Tax), NNU and its members were in the halls of Congress– pushing for this innovative revenue-generating tax on Wall Street– and in the streets bringing attention to it.  

When Wisconsin rose up against anti-union "austerity" measures proposed by Governor Scott Walker, the nurses were there.

When the Occupy Movement needed support, the nurses were there in solidarity.

After the jump, watch a short Loneprotestor video featuring Karen Higgins, head of NNU.

(Update) The flaw in Jan’s Plan to expand AHCCCS

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I posted a few weeks ago about The flaw in Jan's Plan to expand AHCCCS. ICYMI, The Arizona Republic's Robert Robb reached the same conclusion last week, i.e., that Governor Brewer is going to need a two-thirds super-majority vote in both chambers of the legislature to pass the hospital bed tax provision in her plan for expanded Medicaid (AHCCCS in Arizona) because of Prop. 108 (1992). See, there are things on which liberals and conservatives can agree. How many GOP votes does Medicaid expansion need?

A lot of attention has been paid to the substance of Gov. Jan Brewer’s Medicaid expansion proposal. Less attention has been paid to a political and legal question that may be more important in determining its fate: How many Republican votes does it need in the Legislature to be enacted?

The assumption is that all the Democrats in the Legislature will vote for it. They may be tempted to attempt to bargain for something else in exchange for their support. If they are serious about the priority they claim to put on the expansion, they will forgo that temptation. Republican votes for expansion will be tricky to come by. If Brewer has to sell not only the expansion but what Democrats want in exchange for their votes in favor, it might become a bridge too far.

Rep. Steve ‘Secession’ Smith carries Russell Pearce’s anti-immigrant bills

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Rep. Steve "Secession" Smith (R-Maricopa) is determined to win the title of biggest asshole in the Arizona legislature. Dude, the title is yours! Now knock it off!

The latest bit of assholery from Little Stevie is carrying anti-immigrant bills for his buddy, disgraced former Sen. Russell Pearce, which seeks to turn hospital emergency rooms into ICE agents for deporting undocumented immigrants. (A separate Pearce bill seeks to turn schools into ICE agents for deporting undocumented immigrants). Pearce regularly pursued these bills in the Arizona legislature since 2004 without success, because it conflicts with federal laws and the Constitution.

Under federal law hospitals are required to provide emergency room care to everyone, regardless of ability to pay or immigration status. There is also physician-patient confidentiality, and federal medical records privacy laws. But Little Stevie "Secession" Smith doesn't care about federal laws and the Constitution any more than his buddy Russell Pearce did. They hates them immigrants. Ariz. lawmaker: Require hospitals to check immigration status of patients:

The proposal by Rep. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, would require
hospitals to "reasonably confirm'' that those who show up at their doors
are in the country legally if they do not produce proof of valid health
insurance. HB 2293 lists methods that hospital officials and employees
can use to make that determination.

But the measure also says if legal status cannot be
verified, someone from the hospital "must immediately contact the local
federal immigration office or a local law enforcement agency to report
the incident.''

NY Times: What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The New York Times in an editorial opinion today makes the point that What We Don’t Know Is Killing Us:

In one of the 23 executive orders on gun control signed this month, President Obama instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal science agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence. He called on Congress to aid that effort by providing $10 million for the C.D.C. in the next budget round and $20 million to expand the federal reporting system on violent deaths to all 50 states, from the current 18.

That Mr. Obama had to make such a decree at all is a measure of the power of the gun lobby, which has effectively shut down government-financed research on gun violence for 17 years. Research on guns is crucial to any long-term effort to reduce death from guns. In other words, treat gun violence as a public health issue.

But that is precisely what the National Rifle Association and other opponents of firearms regulation do not want. In the absence of reliable data and data-driven policy recommendations, talk about guns inevitably lurches into the unknown, allowing abstractions, propaganda and ideology to fill the void and thwart change.

Paranoid gun worshipers jeopardizing public health

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Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ask any cop or medical professional and they will tell you that gun violence is a health care epidemic in this country. And it is not just suicides, accidental shootings and intentional shootings, but the use of guns to threaten and intimidate in cases of domestic violence, and other instances of assault and battery.

The NRA convinced members of Congress to prohibit any federally funded research into gun violence as a health care issue back in the 1990s. Willful ignorance allows the NRA and the weapons manufacturers it represents in Congress to argue in the abstract because they have prevented the collection of any hard scientific data for this health care epidemic. It is easy to argue that "there is no evidence" when one has prevented scientific research into the empirical evidence.

When President Obama announced his gun violence policies recently Gun Violence Fact Sheet (.pdf), it included this provision:

PRESERVE THE RIGHTS OF DOCTORS TO PROTECT THEIR PATIENTS AND COMMUNITIES FROM GUN VIOLENCE: Doctors and other mental health professionals play an important role in protecting the safety of their patients and the broader community. The administration is clarifying that no federal law in any way prohibits doctors or other health care providers from reporting their patients' threats of violence to the authorities, and issuing guidance making clear that the Affordable Care Act does not prevent doctors from talking to patients about gun safety.